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Unleashing Community Networks: Innovative Licensing Approaches

The Internet Society (ISOC) aims to make the Internet available for everyone, everywhere. ISOC works with industry, government, academia, and other organizations worldwide to support innovation and growth of the open Internet. For over 25 years, ISOC has helped to connect individuals in virtually every country to the Internet.

Part of our mission includes highlighting key policy issues related to connectivity. This “Policy Brief” is part of a series of briefs related to our Community Network campaign — one of our four Strategic Campaign Objectives for 2018, and it complements our “Policy Brief: Spectrum Approaches for Community Networks.”

After more than 25 years of Internet development, there still remains a profound connectivity “gap” in many parts of the world, particularly in developing nations, leaving over half the global population without Internet access 43.58 billion people currently have Internet access.

This connectivity “gap” exists in urban, rural, and remote unserved and underserved areas of many countries, particularly developing and least-developed countries.